Trying to help a friend of a friend with this problem of basic graphics and invisible links in IE8 and FF on a WinXP SP3 laptop. The attached PICTURE makes it easier to understand. It's a shot of a facebook page with basic lines and an invisible link that I clicked on next to the sort link. I removed all the pictures and comments for privacy reasons, but it just looks odd anyways. Another issue that comes up is that when a POP up ad or overlay is on screen there is no 'X' to close, a box to TYPE in text, or a submit button. I have tried resetting to defaults, running IE8 with addons disabled, rebooting in safe mode with networking, it always looks the same in EITHER IE or FF. The computer did not have antivirus on it, so I did install Microsoft Security Essentials. Unfortunately, they have dial up speeds for internet connection and after 20 minutes of waiting for the definitions to download I had to leave, telling them to run a scan after it completed. I haven't seen this type of thing before and I am not sure why it would affect both browsers. What else could I try?

[year+ old attachment deleted by admin]Are there any yellow exclamation points in Device Manager? (Start->Run->devmgmt.msc)
I notice that some odd variant of the Windows Classic theme is running... perhaps with High Contrast enabled causing colors to show up mangled.

Change the theme back to "Windows XP style" and see what happens.

Also, Is the browser set up to view pictures? (Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Multimedia->Show Pictures) Perhaps it may have been disabled by whoever set up the computer due to the user having a slow dial-up connection...No '!' in device manager. Unfortunately the appearance and theme did not help either. I talked with them today just trying things over the phone and they told me they did the virus scan and removed whatever it found. Also tried getting the latest version of flash installed. Started them on installing a new graphic driver. At this point I'm throwing in the towel and suggested they take it to a shop. If I hear back from them I will let you and others know what the problem was. Totally weird. Thanks for the assistance.